On the part of Cambridge St. that used to be part of Court Street (between
Scollay Square and Bowdoin Square), there stood, in the Seventies, an electrical
supply store . . . an extremely unusual thing for those days, when there were
few electrical appliances known. In its basement and attic resided a couple of
assistants who worked in the store and got their rooms as part of their pay. And
there, at night when the store was closed, went on electrical experiments not
precisely within the scope of the store’s business. The two store assistants
were working to perfect a kind of telegraph which would send several messages at
once over one wire, by using different wavelengths. They did not get their
telegraph, but the surprise came when words issued from the instrument at the
basement end of the wire. Thus, in March, 1875, was made a telephone. About a
year later came the first paying telephone subscriber . . . a business man
living in East Somerville, who installed a pair of telephones to connect his
home with his office in Boston. In 1879, a telephone wire was extended from
Boston to Salem, for an exhibit in which people in Boston spoke to a Salem
audience, and the Boston Globe printed, in parallel columns, “What was said” and
“What was heard.” The little “telegraph” experiment in that place near Bowdoin
Square has now grown into a network of telephone extending round the world.
While, next door to where the original instrument was located stands Boston’s
great telephone building.

*

Probably the largest single pier
structures ever built anywhere is the so-called Mystic Docks in Charlestown,
nearly a mile long and with a width about a third of its length. There are many
smaller piers attached to the large one, where ships can dock. Most of the area
of the larger pier is a maze of freight tracks, originally built to give the
products of Lowell and the upper Merrimac direct access to ships in Boston
Harbor. A close runner-up is the “Boston Wharf” in South Boston. This includes
the immense area from Summer Street to the Merchants and Miners landing, and
from Fort Point Channel almost to the Commonwealth Pier. This region is a
counterpart of the one in Charlestown, and it is now almost forgotten that it is
actually a pier.